Monday, June 30, 2008

Muscle Sandwiches

Sophia has always been interested in what's inside her body. Once the tv was on and there was a commercial for a drug for "restless leg syndrome". It featured a woman sitting in a recliner rubbing her legs and a graphic showing "itchy legs" which were filled with stick pins poking them then "creepy crawly legs" which were full of ants. You get the picture. I realized Sophia was staring hypnotized at the screen then staring at her legs back and forth back and forth. The commercial ended and 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

"Mom, what's inside my legs?"

"Muscles and bones".

"What else is under my skin? What about inside my head?"

Rick bought her some childrens anatomy books and we talked about her circulatory system, muscles, brain, etc.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when I made pulled pork sandwiches and Sophia took one look and said "Mom, this looks like somebody's MUSCLES! I am definitely NOT eating MUSCLES!"

"It's not muscle Sophia, it's ham" I replied, but she was not convinced and after seeing her disgust Ella wouldn't eat her "muscle sandwich" either.

This reminded me of the time I made fish and she told Ella not to worry because this was not the kind of fish that swims in the water like Nemo. This was the kind of fish that we eat.

I am dreading the day when she really puts it all together and declares herself a vegetarian. Hopefully she'll wait until college to turn vegetarian like most 18 year old girls.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Ella turns THREE!!!


We celebrated Ella's third birthday last week complete with a princess cake and pinata. It was a beautiful day for a backyard BBQ. This was one of the new, safe pinatas where everyone pulls a ribbon and one opens the secret compartment full of chokable toys and candy. Not as exciting as three year olds swinging a large wooden stick while blindfolded surrounded by a bunch of toddlers. I did worry about Katie and Ceci who were combing the yard like hyenas picking at the scraps after the big kids were done. I fished an atomic fireball out of Ceci's mouth, but otherwise incident free.


Ella was happy to finally turn three since she thought she had turned three about five months ago. When we were at Legoland she wanted to drive the mini cars with Sophia but you had to be three. Rick told Ella to tell the person working the ride that she was three and for Sophia to do the same. Sophia was so excited to have permission to lie she was overdoing it a bit "My sister is DEFINITELY three years old! Right Ella, right Ella? You're THREE, right!?"

Watching Ella sit there with the wheel cranked all the way to the right I realized that there is a reason two year olds can't drive the cars. She spent most of the time stuck in the corner unable to turn her wheel to get out.

After the ride she ran up to me with a huge grin on her face which was surprising since it hadn't looked like she'd particularily enjoyed her limited progress. "Guess what Mommy? I'm THREE!!!" I told her that no, she was still two. She said "NO! Daddy told me. I'm THREE!!!" It took all afternoon to break it to her that she unfortunately was still two. She kept asking when she'd be three again.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Zoo

We took the girls to the zoo which sounded like a fun family outing and somewhere we could easily manage all four girls. We saw all sorts of impressive animals: lions, tigers, bears, elephants, etc. When I asked Sophia and Ella what their favorite part of the day was they said "we saw a BOY horse go pee-pee". Which they did. It was actually a little frightening. Next on their list was the the amount of poo poo in the llama enclosure and finally the Carousel.

Katie and Ceci were most excited about the ducks. I think they could have stood there saying "quack quack" and giggling all day.

The day was going pretty smoothly until we decided to take the train ride. We took Sophia and Ella to the zoo last year and she kept begging to go on the train, but we had a large stroller and told her we couldn't do it. As soon as we were in the car she reminded us that we had promised last year that next time we'd go on the train. I couldn't tell her that that was one of those promises parents make to get out of a place and they assume the child will forget about it. Sophia really had her heart set on a train ride so we finally relented and decided to just park the stroller in the stroller corral at the train stop and take the train around the zoo. After the first 5 minutes it was clear that Katie and Ceci were not going to sit quietly. They devoured the remaining snacks after dumping a bag of goldfish crackers all over the floor and kept trying to launch themselves off the train. Needless to say we became "that family" that everyone was trying to move seats to get away from. I'm more than used to being "that family" but usually it's in a place where we can exit easily that isn't moving. How long could this ride possibly take? The answer I got from the operator..."an hour". Are you kidding me??? We got off at the next stop and had to walk 30 min to get back to our stroller. Rick and I each trying to carry a 20lb squirming 1 yr old.

When I'd lost feeling in my arm I put Katie down to try to walk along with us but each time she'd break into a wild chase. It looked like she was demonstrating the crazy zig zag run you're supposed to do when chased by an alligator.

Notice Rick's crooked glasses on the carousel. This is post the great toddler race across the 216 acre Brookfield Zoo.

This was my attempt at a photo of all four girls standing against the fence. Only Sophia would stand still for more than one second. Katie and Ceci were making a mad dash for the duck pond and Ella wanted to wait to see the horse poop.
Minus the train fiasco it was a fun day however.


Monday, June 23, 2008

ELLLAAA!!!

Katie and Ceci are talking a lot now. They are at that age when they learn new words every day.
Their first word was "Ella". Not in a sweet sisterly way though. More like a danger Will Robinson here comes "ELLLAAA!" They would warn each other then try to scramble to safety. For a while
Katie was walking and Ceci was doing the arms only military crawl so she was generally the one who needed to be saved from Ella trying to take off her clothes or change her diaper. The babies were like living dolls to her. As Ella was barrelling down on them I swear Ceci would give Katie a look that said "save yourself, there's nothing you can do to help me".
Now Katie is saying "Ceci" all the time. If she's awake before Ceci she keeps pointing upstairs saying "Ceci, Ceci, Ceci!" and her whole face lights up when Ceci appears. Ceci is less interested in Katie at this point, but Katie is all about her sister.




Graduation

We are very proud to report that Sophia graduated from St. Joseph's Preschool. I'm pretty sure I never graduated from anything until I was a teenager, but at St. Joe's they have a ceremony green cardboard mortarboards and all. Sophia was very excited to show us around her classroom and get up on stage with her fellow graduates to receive her "Certificate of Completion". Sophia looks frightened in this photo, but she is actually focused on the treat table which I told her she could not run to until I took a picture. Thus the frozen smile and laser beam glare at the plate of oreos over my left shoulder.


I was most relieved at the end of the ceremony when none of the graduates fell head first while crossing the bridge on the stage and waving at their families simultaneously. You can't see it in the picture, but it was not a smooth ramp type bridge. It was a series of awkward steps that a seasoned circus performer would be challenged to navigate. I kept thinking that these kids had new slippery bottomed dress up shoes on and someone was going to bite it walking down the bridge. No one did however and graduation ended accident free.




Friday, June 20, 2008

Easter in June

Since I'm catching up I thought I'd post some Easter pictures.

Katie couldn't get enough of the Easter bunny at the Saddle. She was following him around like a groupie. Sophia kept saying "That Katie really does LOVE the Easter bunny!" I'm sure the sweaty Saddle employee who lost the coin flip which landed him inside the suit got a bit tired of her after the first thousand times she pulled his costume.

This was interesting because Katie wanted nothing to do with Santa:




















Sophia kept looking at the gap in his costume at his wrists and tugging at it. She told me that she was pretty sure it was just a person in a costume since she saw he had a person's wrists.

Easter morning was a blur. Sophia and Ella were enjoying hunting for eggs when I realized that Ceci was eating the eggs like an apple shell and all. Katie was doing the same with the chocolate eggs eating the foil wrapper along with the chocolate. Made for some colorful diapers.



Thursday, June 19, 2008

Pink Eye

Sophia was sitting on her bed changing into her nightgown when she lept off the bed with a terror stricken face. I asked what was wrong...did she see a spider or get poked by a stray polly pocket? She looked at me and said "I DEFINITELY don't want to get pink eye!" "Huh?" I eloquently replied. "Daddy told me that if I sit on my bed without underwear on I may accidently toot and then I could get pink eye." I assured her that this was not the case and it was ok to sit on her bed while changing her underwear. Later, while reading bedtime books she asked "Mom, is it ok if I toot at night under my sheets if I'm wearing underwear? I DEFINITELY don't want to get pink eye." I again assured her that there was no chance of getting pink eye.

As I was leaving her room that night she sleepily asked me "Mom, what's pink eye?" I told her not to worry, that it goes away and she will not get it from tooting in bed.

I went straight to the kitchen to ask Rick why he would tell her such a thing and he said he saw it in a movie and warned Sophia and Ella when he saw them sitting on their pillows changing pjs.

Great.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Before you know it







Watching Cecilia and Katie run around the backyard I'm realizing that "they really do grow up before you know it". Since I'm not the scrapbooking kind due to a lack of both creative skills and free time I'm going to start a blog in an attempt to document our lives "before we know it" and our girls have grown up on us.

We tell Sophia all the time to stay whatever age she is at the time and not to grow up. She launches into: "I'm going to be 6, then 7, then 8...." all the way to "SEVENTEEN!!!" (I think this is about as old as a person can be to her) and Rick and I look at our "big girl" hardly able to imagine her as a teenager but knowing it's going to be here before we know it...